Free The Snow Globe by Sheila Roberts

Santa.”
    Kiley regarded her skeptically. “You don’t.”
    â€œOf course, I do.” She grinned. “Then on Christmas morningI eat ’em. Seriously,” she added, “I believe in miracles. After all, isn’t that what this time of year is all about?” She hugged Kiley. “And I believe you. If you say you see the toyshop and Craig in that snow globe then you do. And that’s that.”
    Allison’s support should have been enough, but Kiley found herself doubting her own eyesight. After Allison left she settled on the couch with the snow globe and started a blizzard. Even before the snow finished falling she could see the Pike Place toyshop. She was not imagining this. Couldn’t be. But how could she prove it?
    Inspiration hit. She jumped off the couch and ran for her digital camera. Allison hadn’t been looking carefully enough. Suzanne had been deliberately blind. The light had been bad. As with many live shows, something had gone wrong. But this time she’d capture that image and then Suzanne would have to believe her. Camera in hand, she shook the snow globe and then set it on the coffee table and snapped the picture. Ha!
    Smiling, she looked at the camera screen. There was the snow globe, but the Pike Place Market toyshop was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the angel in its Alpine village seemed to mock her. Icy fingers of fear ran over her skin and she dropped the camera. She was hallucinating. “I am going crazy,” she said to herself in shock.
    But crazy people didn’t find a shop, let alone a man, that was an exact match to what they had seen in a snow globe, did they?
    Kiley suddenly remembered Otto Schwartz, its original owner. He probably thought he was crazy when he first saw his futurewife inside that glass ball, but a miracle happened anyway. Miracles had a way of happening when people needed them most. Kings were born in mangers; angels serenaded shepherds. Not everyone saw miracles when they happened, but that didn’t make them any less real.
    She erased the false picture from her camera’s memory card and returned the snow globe to her dresser. Then she settled in with her new issue of Runner’s World, keeping the phone handy. Craig would call. They’d be together. It was her turn for a holiday miracle.
    She got three more calls that night. One from Mom, asking how she was doing, another from Gwinnie, calling to reassure herself that Kiley hadn’t yet disowned her, and another from a telemarketer. But nothing from Craig Peters. To distract herself from her disappointment and the possibility that she might be going insane, she watched her favorite TV shows until, finally, there was nothing left to do but to go to bed and feel let down.
    She avoided even looking at the snow globe as she turned off the bathroom light and padded to her sleigh bed (the second purchase she’d made with Jeremy for their new life together).
    Craig would call. Tomorrow.
    Â 
    Kiley began her next day with a morning run, splashing through puddles, enjoying air still fresh from the weekend’s snowfall, breathing in, breathing out, welcoming the endorphins racing through her body as she jogged her way along the sidewalk. Shereturned home feeling energized. Until she checked her cell and found she had no messages.
    He’ll call, she told herself. Meanwhile, you have things to do. And to prove it, she spent the rest of the morning on the Internet, catching up on her social networking, searching job sites and sending off e-mails to let friends and former coworkers know that her services were now available if anyone needed a Web site designed or a mailing list managed or…anything. Just a couple of clients would keep her boat afloat until she found full-time employment again.
    Having done all she could on the job front, she put on her favorite Carrie Underwood CD and went into a cleaning fever, singing along with “Before He